stress baking
by kellermenschen
Summary: Angela and Henry fight the same pain but in a different way. (Mention of major character death and spoilers for Miracle Mask, obviously.)


She tried to be happy about the cakes. She really tried. But Angela Ledore knew exactly what Henry's occasional baking meant.

Already back in the days, it had been a hobby of his. Whenever Randall urged his group of friends to go on another of his adventures, they hardly ever went without being provided with some freshly baked cake, cookies or cupcakes. He started off with basic ring cake and as time went by and all of them grew older, Henry's baking started to become a part of going out everyone looked forward to especially.  
There was this one pick nick the squad went on for Randall's birthday for which Henry had prepared a whole buffet of different pastries. Chocolate brownies with cherries and walnuts in them, a raspberry cake with chocolate frosting, cinnamon rolls. As expected, Dalston ate most of it, or more accurately, _devoured_ most of it, however one could clearly tell how much Henry's efforts added to the overall feeling of happiness and joy.

It were small things like these that truly shone light on Henry's caring personality and remembering it left Angela with a smile.  
But not for long.

Eventually, everything changed. There was one last adventure and none would follow.  
That morning, she caught Henry secretly shoving chocolate chip cookies in Randall's backpack. The chocolate would prevent them from getting dry too quickly, which was why he thought they were a good choice for the trip, he said. Although he obviously tried to hide both the treat and the tired look in his eyes which resulted from getting up extra early to bake, as Angela assumed, she noticed. She noticed and even if her heart was very heavy that morning, the smell of cookies lifted her spirits and she smiled. Because it wasn't only the cookies or the baking. It was Henry looking out for his friends, searching for a way to cheer them up in hard times and sacrificing his sleep for someone else's smile. It was Henry being Henry and it made Angela regain hope.  
But again, not for long.

After Randall's death, the feeling of happiness and the idea of a smile were things that seemed so far away to Angela. Randall was gone and wouldn't come back and so would all the joyful memories of them wandering around Stansbury. Being surrounded by all those places they visited together and walking past them on her way home every day didn't exactly add to her desperate tries of coping, of escaping what had become their reality yet still felt so hard to fully comprehend. The consuming darkness inside her made everything taste bitter. Or maybe Henry's baking really was awful during that episode of grieving. After all, they both shared the feeling of loss, guilt and desperation which might have been one of the reasons they decided to fake their marriage. It remained unspoken, yet they could feel each other suffering in the exact same way, every day, for a long period of time. It at least seemed as if it lasted forever.

Eventually, the feeling of pain became a numb one, resting in the back of her head instead of a pervasive one that filled all of her head, all the time. They moved on, slowly.

At first unable to develop any opinion on the marriage, Angela felt herself become more and more relieved to have Henry by her side. It meant not having to deal with the enormous range of different feelings she kept inside herself on her own, to have someone that knows what went on inside your head when you stared at your plate instead of eating for what seemed decades, someone that, instead of wasting time on words, just held you in his arms so tight that the darkness slowly but surely ebbed, someone that cried the same tears like you after waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night.  
And moreover, someone with equally individual coping mechanisms.

She could tell from the way his hands shivered heavily whether this was a regular or a coping cake. Henry would accidentally wake her up at 3 AM by dropping the cake tin on the kitchen floor or surprise her with poppy-seed cake after coming home with his voice shaking. He would block the whole kitchen at dinner time for several hours so that neither of them could prepare dinner and he would spontaneously rush out of the front door with his shoes only half tied to shop for ingredients.  
It wasn't that his baking was particularly bad when he did it due to coping reasons, no, not at all, but Angela could taste that it was the result of overwhelming stress, grief and the search of a way to leave all of that behind.

She would have loved not to be able to distinguish happy cakes from desperate cakes and she would have loved to be able to enjoy both of them, if it weren't for her understanding exactly what those cakes meant, because she felt the same.  
The pain never truly disappeared.


End file.
